When we go farther back and reach the actual Glacial period we find a very different state of things. The men who then existed in the caverns are called the Neander men. They were a short, bandy-legged, long-armed, low-browed people, great workers of flints. They had the use of fire, and contended with hyenas and bears and lions for the occupation of their caverns. In their day—the day of European glaciation—the mammoth was in full occupation of the pine forests on the edge of the glaciers. But the Neander men made no sculptures, or carving, or engravings. The gap between them and the Cromagnon men is much greater than that between an Australian black fellow and an average Englishman; indeed, the difference is properly expressed by regarding the Neander man as a distinct species—Homo neanderthalensis.
Passing again farther back over an immense period of time, we find Europe warm again; the glaciers have (for a time) gone or retreated far up the mountains but are found in extension again at a still earlier date. An inter-Glacial set of animals is now found living in a comparatively warm climate in Western Europe. Another elephant (Elephas antiquus) is there (not the mammoth), and another rhinoceros (not the woolly rhinoceros of the later Glacial period); the hippopotamus flourished then in Europe and swam in the Thames and Severn, and there too, at last is the sabre-toothed tiger, which did not exist at all at a later period! Now was the time when a man, if he could, might have "scribed" the image of a sabre-toothed tiger on a piece of bone, but, so far as we know, he did not and could not. This was ages before other succeeding men walked "on glittering ice fields," and they, in turn, were ages earlier than the artistic Cromagnards of the Reindeer period.
The presence of men in the warm inter-Glacial times in Europe is proved by the association of rough but undisputed flint implements with the inter-Glacial animals and by the discovery of a most interesting human jaw (chinless, like that of the Neander men) in what is held to be a præ-Glacial deposit at Heidelberg. We have very little knowledge of Glacial and præ-Glacial man except well characterized flint implements and two skeletons, some detached limb bones, four or five jaws, and as many skulls. [2] But of post-Glacial Palæolithic man we know the skeletons of the Cromagnard race, their sepulture, their decorative necklaces, and their bone and ivory carvings and engravings, and the coloured rock paintings and other work of earlier races (the Aurignacians, and others) belonging to successive epochs or eras, which have been discovered in caves in France, Spain, Belgium, and Austria. It was long after them that the Neolithic people appeared.
The preceding remarks will have made it clear that the engraved antler here figured was carved by a man who was not really at all primitive, although he lived probably between twenty and fifty thousand years ago. It will also have been made clear that hundreds of such engravings, more or less fragmentary, are known. Some are very skilful works of art, others of a much inferior quality. Many, however, show an astonishing familiarity with the animal drawn and a sureness of drawing which is not surpassed by the work of modern artists (see Chapter III). The interest of the particular engraved antler which I am describing is that it is the only carving of its age as yet discovered which is more than a drawing or sculpture of a single animal. It is a "picture" in the sense of being a composition. It is not, it is true, painted—it is engraved; but being a composition it is entitled to be called "the earliest picture in the world." Let me describe it a little more fully with the help of the illustrations.
The engraving has been made on a long cylindrical piece of the red deer's antler. It can hardly be considered as decorative, since the figures of the animals do not show as such on the cylindrical surface (Figs. 1 and 2). Pieces of antler, bone, and ivory carved with spiral scrolls and circles which are really decorative and effective as decoration are found in these caves (Fig. 29). But often such pieces as the present are met with. It has been discovered by French archæologists that the true intent of such engravings may be rendered evident by rolling the cylinder on a plastic substance (soft wax or similar material), when the drawing is "printed off" or "developed" as it is termed. A great number of such line engravings have been thus printed off or developed, and plaster casts made from the flat impressions are preserved in the museum of St. Germain, the engraved lines being rendered obvious by letting them fill with printing ink. They often give us in this way a "printed" drawing of remarkable accuracy and artistic quality. The rolled-off print of our specimen is shown in Fig. 4. The cylinder has been damaged by time, but the print shows, more or less completely, a vigorous outline drawing of three red deer, with six salmon-like fish placed in a decorative way above them and between their legs. Two lozenge-shaped outlines (above the larger stag) are held by good authorities to be the signature of the artist. The group of deer is represented in movement. The largest stag is on the right; his hindquarters are broken away by injury to the cylinder. He is commencing to advance, and turns his head backwards to see what is the thing which has alarmed him and his companions; at the same time his mouth is open, and he is "blowing." The second stag is a younger and smaller animal, and is retreating more rapidly. The cylinder is damaged so that, although all the four legs of this second stag are preserved, the head and neck are gone, though the points of the antlers are preserved. The same damage has removed all but the hind legs of the still younger animal who heads the group. The beauty of the drawing of these hind legs and the extraordinary impression of graceful, rapid movement given by their hanging pose, side by side, is not surpassed, even if it be equalled, by the work of any modern draughtsman. It is clear that the youngest and smallest member of the group is, as is natural, the most timid, and that he has sprung off with a sudden bound on the occurrence of the alarm from the rear, which is setting the whole group into motion with increasing velocity as we pass from right to left.
Fig. 4.—Rolled impression or "development" of the engraving on the Lortet antler.